Wednesday, August 27, 2014

News Flash! Elderly Man Confused by News Flash!

By Keith:

Learning English language is a bit like learning the piano. It isn't that difficult to negotiate in a strictly mechanical sense. Years of further instruction and scholarship are required to prevent undesired noise.

Dear readers, today's subject destroys the piano as to be unrepairable. Almost as if the composer (and 1970's art star) George Crumb had placed a vibrating sex toy to the soundboard for special effects.

Speaking of George, is anyone old enough to remember Pat Boone? Welcome to today's WO'C feature.

Like you, I’m sure, I watch a lot of the TV talk shows. Things seems to be changing so fast, and there are constantly “breaking news” announcements interrupting the shows themselves. It’s hard to keep up, but I want to know who did what, and why.

Pat, it's always cool to know who did what to whom. You're a curious fellow still. And it's refreshing your sharing with us that you watch talk shows to which you aren't invited as guest. You were on Carson a few times.

How did we get into this mess with our precious healthcare? And does anybody know a way out? A way back to what we had?

The way out is impossible. If you need a way-back machine call Mr. Peabody.

Are there answers? Real, substantive, effective answers?

The answer, Pat, is "42", although admittedly it's a pat answer.

Yes…but first, we’ve got to ask the right questions.

I’ve mentioned this famous fable before in one of my columns, but I mention it here again, because most everybody is familiar with it. It’s the story of the “emperor’s new clothes” the pompous ruler who was so vain he paraded around naked, convinced he was wearing the world’s most expensive and elegant diaphanous garments, intimidating his subjects into professing they too saw and marveled at his grandeur.

I wish you hadn't mentioned. It makes my job more difficult. This is not a proper forum for your blatant bare-butt nakedness. As for your own diaphanous garments would you please wear them again? You might be invited as a guest on Ellen.

But it’s mainly the story of the naïve little boy who, looking honestly at the ridiculous ruler, exclaimed loudly, “The emperor has no clothes on! Look, he’s naked! Mommy, why doesn’t he have any clothes on?”

Because son, he is truly naked. You did it yourself – for a gig in the motion pictures State Fair, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, and -- as we'll see far, far below -- Life magazine. [ed: btw thanks to Newsmax for that diaeresis in the word naive. Someone reads the New Yorker.

"Uhhh, listen, can you take a step back? I can feel your dirty pillows on my man-nipples. Maybe two steps...Really not a hugger...Is the camera still on...?"

It was the right question.

So, I’m asking the two vital questions all the blathering “news people” and “reporters” haven’t had the courage, or the common sense, to ask on two of the most pressing issues of the day.

Pat, I kind of understand the first point of your rant. What, on earth, is the second?

One: why was a Canadian company, with no previous experience, given $687,000,000 to create the monstrosity called the Obamacare website and operational rat’s nest?

Sorry Pat. It was Oracle's debacle. You are not speaking truth to readers. Canada has socialised medical insurance.

Two: why isn’t anybody defending the right of any business or property owner to serve anybody he wants to or decline to produce products that offend his own religious beliefs?

Why “him”? Is health care restricted to men only? (Men are more costly to insure as a result of negligence in seeking advice from a physician.) There's always the nasty problem of public accommodation even in the health insurance industry.

When these questions are honestly and objectively asked, there are answers ... and the American people deserve to know them. And we absolutely must insist that our elected representatives get to the bottom of these things and make the facts known to all of us.

First, this governmental takeover of the healthcare system is a giant, virulent cancer eating away at us, economically and politically.

OK Pat, done with you. If I had some spare change I would forward a copy of the fascinating extended essay Illness As Metaphor by Susan Sontag. She knew English language rather well. She died of cancer.

As for “getting to the bottom of these things” I'll leave that for you to explore on your way to “Mr. Liquor” on a late night on the town.

So much for English language. As prophesied in the “Space Cadet Handbook” we are all truly doomed.

9 comments:

Oh, you can see a picture of Pat Boone so nightmarish it makes the work of Francis Bacon or HR Giger look like the work of Bob Ross. Just search the words "Pat Boone box", and steel yourself. What you'll see is not safe for work, home, or any place where decent people dwell.

Actually CGI bought American Management Systems (AMS) which had a long history with CMS and HealthIT in 2004. The company mgmt made boneheaded decisions when staffing up for the Marketplace work in that they appeared to hire people with little healthit experience rather than pulling from the current staff.

Thanks for the clarification on this issue. I was curious as to the figure published for services rendered. I'm also retired from IT contracts, and we know the phrase "close enough for government work."